BERNIE Nolan is in the mood for celebrating and little wonder. Delighted at beating breast cancer, she’s throwing an “I’ve kicked the b****** out” party.

Her recent brush with death has given the singer and actress a new lease of life – she even felt confident enough to pose naked in the touring production of Calendar Girls.

Not even having to shave off her hair, as chemotherapy caused it to start dropping out, dented her spirit, optimism and courage.

Bernie laughs: “I’ve had cancer, you know! But now let’s party. Cancer has improved my life and my marriage – and my hair is hilarious.

“It grew back grey, so I coloured it. But it’s now curly, when before it was dead straight.”

Facing down a potential killer – and crossing her fingers she’ll get the all-clear in five years – has left Bernie keen to put the record straight about the key dramas in her life.

Here, in a frank exchange, she reveals her heartbreak at the hands of cheating ex Bradley Walsh, now the star of Law and Order: UK.

Bernie also begs her feuding sisters to end their bitter rift – and opens up about the secret Nolan sister they are desperate to track down.

And she recalls the “saddest time of her life”, when her first child was stillborn.

In her younger days, Bernie, 50, was known as the “wild Nolan”. A party animal she admits to once sinking a bottle of vodka in a session.

Then she fell for Bradley – later to star in Coronation Street – who bombarded her with messages and roses.

Believing she had found the love of her life, she even went shopping for a wedding dress.

But Bradley betrayed her by having at least two affairs during their three-year relationship.

Speaking ahead of the publication of the new Nolans’ autobiography, Survivors: Our Story, From Us to You With Love – which is being serialised in the Mirror all this week – Bernie says: “Shane Richie and Coleen introduced me to Bradley in 1989. They took me to see him in a show. Afterwards we chatted for the first time. It was a bit embarrassing because I already knew he fancied me, but it was awkward in a nice way.

“From that evening we were together. We never argued, we went for picnics in the Lake District and everything about our relationship seemed great when it was just the two of us.

“But I quickly realised that whatever Brad did, there would be a woman involved. If he had tennis lessons, it would be with a woman. If he was in a show, he was surrounded by dancers.

“I was with him one day and a woman phoned him. I could hear her talking and it was obvious she was upset about something. ‘Her flat got burgled and she was a bit shaken up,’ Bradley explained when he put the phone down.

“It was only later I found out from a mutual friend that there hadn’t been a burglary and the other woman was upset for far more obvious reasons!

“But when I confronted Bradley, he was full of remorse and apologies. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, over and over again. ‘Please take me back, Bernie. I love you.’ What could I do? I loved him, too. So we got back together.

“But then I discovered Bradley had been sleeping with someone else. ‘Please don’t leave me,’ he said, starting to cry. ‘I’m so, so sorry, Bernie. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. All I know is that I love you and want to be with you.’

“It went on like that for ages. In the end, I relented again. I really thought Brad and I would marry and it’d be for keeps. Mum even took me out shopping to look at wedding dresses.”

The final straw was when a friend spotted Bradley in a restaurant having a candle-lit dinner with one of the dancers from his show, and called Bernie to tell her.

“I felt sick,” says Bernie. “I’d tried to trust him again and again, but each time I’d been made to look like a fool. I was due to visit Bradley that weekend, but I called him straightaway. ‘Hi, Brad,’ I said. ‘Did you go out last night?’ ‘No, I just stayed in,’ he replied.

“‘Oh, Bradley, you are such an idiot. Don’t you realise people tell me things?’

“Quick as a flash, Bradley had his answer ready: ‘Oh, we were just waiting for the other two to turn up.’ ‘It was a table for two,’ I said. ‘The waiters just put us there while they were getting the bigger table ready.’ It was all so obviously rubbish.

“I said, ‘Just stop lying, Bradley. Look, I’m not coming this weekend. In fact, I don’t want to see you any more at all.’ It was over. I put the phone down and cried my eyes out. I’d adored Bradley and I felt utterly heartbroken.

“When I think about it now, I feel I had a lucky escape. A while later he wrote me a letter saying he hoped we could still be mates. I wrote him one back saying: ‘I didn’t want to be your mate. I wanted to be your wife.’’’

Fortunately, Bernie went on to find happiness with Steve, her husband of 14 years and the father of their daughter Erin, 12.

It is the acrimonious arguments among the rest of her family that sadden her. Rows have ripped the six Nolan sisters apart. The latest flare-up erupted when Anne, 60, and Denise, 58, were left out of the 2009 reunion tour.

Bernie says: “I did try to get Anne in, but it was all out of my hands because the record label just wanted the four of us.”

In a direct plea to her sisters, she adds: “Can we please get over it and get on with our lives now? We are talking now and I went to Anne’s 60th. But it will never be the same – too much water under the bridge.”

As tough as the family feud is to deal with, nothing could come close to the trauma of having her stillborn daughter, Kate. Bernie says it was “the saddest time of my life”.

After her 20-week scan, doctors raised concerns about her unborn child. Further checks discovered the baby had Edwards Syndrome, a chromosome disorder where the neck hadn’t developed properly, and spina bifida. Worried, she showed the scans to a friend, a consultant obstetrician.

“‘I’m so sorry, Bernie, but this is the worst strain of Edwards Syndrome I’ve ever seen,’ he told me,” she recalls, quietly. “‘I’m afraid your baby hasn’t got a chance of surviving. She’ll die as soon as she is born.’

“I was too shocked to cry. I felt numb.”

Bernie, who was booked in for an induced birth, continues: “When she came out, there was only Steve, the nurse and me in the room. She was born and there was total silence. Steve sobbed quietly on my shoulder, but none of us said a word.”

Then a Catholic priest refused to baptise Kate, deeming it abortion if a baby is induced when it has no chance of life. She adds: “I was so upset that anyone could act like that. I’ve never forgotten or forgiven it.”

Throughout all the private heartache, Bernie has always managed a smile.

“I’m still mental. I love to party and can stay up until 5am. Last October I turned 50, but I couldn’t have a party because I had only been out of hospital for two days. Now I’ve kicked it. The cancer is all gone. I haven’t got the all-clear yet, that takes five years, but I’m having a huge party to celebrate.

“Cancer has improved my life and my marriage – which was great anyway, but it’s made us much closer. I know that sounds really really weird.

“Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t put it on anybody and I wish it hadn’t happened to me, but it has improved my life in many ways.

“The main thing is, I’m alive.”

* Survivors: Our Story – From Us To You With Love, by The Nolans, will be published by Sidgwick & Jackson on April 15.